CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, is arguably the world’s strongest Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) law, because it is the only one that mandates that all significant environmental impacts be mitigated.
CEQA is under attack now, mostly by developers of large housing projects whose projects are delayed by CEQA lawsuits. They claim that CEQA is slowing down much-needed housing production, but a recent study showed that only about 135 CEQA cases are filed each year, and only a quarter of them challenged housing projects. The rate of CEQA challenge for new housing units was about ten percent.
A measure on the California Ballot, Proposition 45, would water down the CEQA process for certain types of projects, types that Prop. 45 calls “essential.”
Before CEQA was adopted, state and local agencies in California decided whether to approve projects without any information about the environmental impacts of those projects. CEQA requires that a document be prepared for projects that might have significant environmental impacts, either an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), for projects that have significant impacts, or a Negative Declaration (ND or MND), for projects that do not, or just have impacts that can be mitigated to the level where they’re no longer significant. These documents allow the public and decision-makers to take a project’s environmental impacts into account when deciding whether to approve the project.
Prop 45 would greatly reduce CEQA requirements for what it defines as “essential projects.,” which include housing projects and “broadband and telecommunications infrastructure.” Ads for Prop. 45 say that it will make housing more affordable in the state by eliminating red tape in the approval process. But there is no evidence that the savings boon Prop. 45 would provide for developers will end up lowering housing prices.
It is likely that Prop. 45 will apply to data centers, and make it much easier for them to be approved, with limited environmental review and less local control.
Prop. 45 applies to wildfire risk reduction projects, which courts will probably interpret to include clearcutting.
California should not be weakening its environmental protections at a time when environmental protections are being dismantled in the federal government. States must step up and make up for environmental deregulation and the federal administration’s hostility to environmental protections.
For more information, see the No on Prop 45 website.